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How Being Successful Can Impact Your Love Life

We often underestimate how being successful can impact your love life.

By Ossiana TepfenhartPublished 7 years ago 7 min read
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Illustrated by Jihyang Lim

As a relationship writer, I discuss how many things can affect your love life — your age, your waistline, your personality, and even your clothing style are all things I've touched upon in the past.

Many of these things are pretty obvious when it comes to dating. That's why so many articles on the net exist about these factors. However, there are certain topics that we dare not broach as relationship writers, primarily because of what they say about human nature.

How being successful can impact your love life is one of those things, and speaking as someone who's seeing it in their own world, I can understand why success has become so taboo. After all, the why's and how's of success and its impact on dating really do tell an ugly story about much of human nature.

Success makes you more attractive...

In order to understand how being successful can impact your love life, you need to understand what success is — or at least, what most people consider success to be at face value.

Success, in its most obvious form, is money. But, having a large bank account alone isn't what most people consider success. Success is also having a good standing in the community, having a prestigious job, and also having a role in society that you feel you can be proud of.

In order to be successful, you often need a lot of traits that make you attractive to the opposite sex, such as money, charisma, good looks, and a good head on your shoulders. If you really think about it, it's understandable why success is beautiful; it says a lot about the person.

Personality and lifestyle traits of success are great. Seeing indicators of these things would, after all, make your online dating profile more attractive, wouldn't it?

The thing about being successful that's clear is that it makes you more attractive, much more so than people want to admit. But, what many people don't want to admit is why it makes you so much more attractive.

But it also has a tendency of showing the unattractive sides of humanity.

As we explained in the prior section, being successful tends to make a person linked with certain traits. We assume they are hardworking, honest, intelligent, and to a point, socially adept. These are safe assumptions to make in most cases — and they are totally legitimate reasons why you might find someone attractive.

However, that doesn't fully explain why girls throw themselves at rappers. In fact, rappers often discuss, at length, how often girls didn't appreciate them for what they had to offer before they were famous. The same can be said for CEOs, fashion designers, and even artists.

Realizing this can quickly show you how being successful can impact your love life in an ugly way. The people who are attracted to you for your success often come with strings attached. At times, they may not even like you for who you really are — but rather the success you attract.

You see, most people tend to want to know successful people because of what they can potentially get from the deal. In other words, when you become successful, you can never be sure if they love you for you, or if they love you for what you provide for them.

If you date a successful person, there's an unspoken assumption that this person will end up giving you a more luxurious lifestyle. They may like the idea of sharing the spotlight, being able to namedrop, or worse, getting to "take you down a notch" to make themselves feel better.

This is often why you see many successful people staying single late into their thirties, why many successful people end up being abused, or why you see so many bitter men with loaded pockets in the dating scene.

This side of human nature is what makes talking about personal success and relationships so taboo; no one wants to admit the selfishness of humanity as a whole. We all want to think we're selfless, but our attraction to money, popularity, respect and charisma prove otherwise, doesn't it?

The level of success you have also can push away people who would have been otherwise fine with you — but it also can attract better people to you as well.

As a relationship writer, I've heard of many instances where a couple got together with one partner significantly less successful than the other. When the less successful partner became an equal, they often complained that their partners became icy, cold, or even abusive towards them.

This isn't unusual; weak people are intimidated by success — and will do what they can to keep people beneath them as a result. This is one of the most common reasons why abusive relationships start; it's insecurity on the side of the abuser that makes them lash out at people they deem to be "weaker but better" than them.

Many people will not approach those they deem way more successful than they are, primarily because it's intimidating for them to do so. So, you might not always get as many advances as you'd hope to get if you do make the upper echelons of success.

That being said, success attracts everyone — both good and bad. That means you will inherently attract more scummy types than you will good types in the dating scene. That's just the rule of big numbers, sadly.

But, before you decide to trade in your success for a luxury cardboard box on the Upper East Side, it's important to understand how being successful can impact your love life in a good way, too.

There's a classic phrase that talks about how birds of a feather tend to flock together. This is very true. So, other people who are successful on the same level as you will be more likely to be attracted to you than they used to be.

The more successful you become, the better chances are of you getting into a relationship with someone who is just as successful — or even more successful — than you.

Since success tends to require the same traits in terms of personality, that also means that you will likely be more compatible with an equally successful partner. They will be more likely to have the same goals, habits, drive, and personality traits you do.

Moreover, since most successful people tend to be socially adept, that also means they will be better able to communicate with you and work with you towards your goals.

So while the dating pool may shrink to a point, the options are better than they would be if you weren't successful.

But really, one of the most interesting ways you'll learn about how being successful can impact your love life is how it changes you.

The funny thing about success is that it does change you as a person, and at times, you may not really recognize yourself from the way you used to be.

Success often means that you learned the lesson that you can't light yourself on fire to keep others warm. So, to a point, you may end up finding yourself doing things that are more selfish than you would have once considered okay.

The more successful you get, the choosier you also become when it comes to the people you hang out with. To a point, this is self-preservation. After all, not every person around a successful individual is going to have their best interests in mind.

As you continue to get better at fitting into the requirements you need to attain full success, you also will get better at dealing with people — and better at figuring out what people really mean when they say something to you.

You might also see yourself becoming more jaded, more interested in things that don't have to do with you, and also more into the idea of cultivating yourself as a person.

These things seem subtle, but they're not. They are changes that make huge, sweeping differences in the ways you interact with others. If you don't think dates notice it, you're wrong. They do; and, depending on who it is, it can be a turn on or a turnoff.

Finally, a word of advice.

If you're right at the brink of making it big, you probably have noticed a lot of people leaving your social circle — and your romantic realm. To a point, the success you're getting may just end up meaning that the person you would have been compatible with before wouldn't be right for you now.

And of course, that also means that maybe, right now is the time that you've finally become someone else's Mr. or Ms. Right.

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About the Creator

Ossiana Tepfenhart

Ossiana Tepfenhart is a writer based out of New Jersey. This is her work account. She loves gifts and tips, so if you like something, tip her!

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